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Coronavirus: Hilarie Burton harnesses star power to rally Dutchess, nation to help

What's it like for a celebrity couple to leave Los Angeles, settle in the Hudson Valley and engage their community and neighbors? Life is good for actors Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Hilarie Burton. Video by John W. Barry/Poughkeepsie Journal

All of the Poughkeepsie Journal's coverage of coronavirus is being provided for free to our readers. Please consider supporting local journalism by subscribing to the Journal at PoughkeepsieJournal.com/subscribe.

In early March, northern Dutchess County resident Jeffrey Dean Morgan was in Massachusetts for the filming of a new movie he is starring in, “Shrine."

Back home in the Hudson Valley, Morgan’s wife, television actress Hilarie Burton of “One Tree Hill” fame, was growing anxious over the emerging coronavirus pandemic. Burton with her two young children, on March 7, headed north to join Morgan, who millions of television viewers know as the character Negan on "The Walking Dead."

"We were going to camp out with dad," Burton told the Journal during a recent telephone interview.

The couple's son celebrated his birthday in Massachusetts on Saturday, March 14. By that Monday, production was shuttered on Morgan's film.

"We got in the car and came home," Burton said. "We just hunkered down. There was so much anxiety. We were trying to make sense of everything. By the time we drove back home it was full-blown panic everywhere."

The full picture of how the global pandemic was resonating in northern Dutchess became clear.

Hilarie Burton with protective masks she has sewn at home.(Photo: Courtesy photo)

That prompted Burton to take action, both at home and on a national scale, harnessing the reach of her celebrity to connect like-minded helpers around the country with organizations in need.

With posts encouraging action and retweets of calls for help to a following of more than one million on social media, she's helped inspired a grassroots movement that is likely saving lives.

Her message is simple and defiant: Help where you can, be innovative and keep kicking back against the insidious coronavirus.

"If we have the means to help people, that’s our goal," she said of the responsibility of celebrities. "It's our honor to do that."

And, though it's become a national call to arms, the roots of her efforts are based in local community need, spurred by talking with neighbors, the same as those going on in towns across the county.

The endeavor from Burton and her group has generated homemade protective masks; delivered meals for health workers at the coronavirus testing site in Kingston; and procured personal protection equipment for Northern Dutchess Hospital in Rhinebeck.

"How lucky are we?" said Dawn Morrison, director of the Northern Dutchess Hospital Foundation, with whom Burton and her neighbors are working. "We feel very fortunate, of course. We can't thank her enough."

I was informed by a number of people that medical staff have been requesting a way to easily differentiate the inside of the mask from the outside. Using two different colors helps. I had already finished this batch. So I put a special message on them. Love to our hospital. 💖 pic.twitter.com/INkBaqG9DH

She said she spends around four hours a day from her Dutchess farm communicating with others online looking to help. She spends even more time — 5 to 6 hours a day — sewing masks herself. Despite her national impact, her focus, she said, is on her own backyard.

"There is a lot of responsibility when you live in a small town and there is not an anonymous other that might get sick," she said. "It's your neighbor that could get sick."

She's getting plenty of help at home. Her son is helping with the sewing — "He is my right-hand man." And the person ferrying supplies is none other than Morgan.

"I've been making him my errand boy to go into the hospital, to drop things off," Burton said.

My super cute husband @JDMorgan just went and dropped off a new shipment of polypropylene face masks for our hospital. And I just cut 3 dozen more.

Community comes together

The work of Burton and her northern Dutchess neighbors through the Families for Astor Committee, a fundraising group for Astor Services, is part of a local, national and international movement assisting those in crisis.

Free milk has been given away in Rhinebeck. Flowers, notes and lollipops have been left on the cars of workers at Vassar Brothers Medical Center and MidHudson Regional Hospital in Poughkeepsie. Thousands of masks and gowns have been donated by local and regional companies. Thousands of dollars in funding has fed first responders and hospital workers, in addition to helping to keep food pantries stocked. The donations have come through countywide drives, companies and individuals simply looking to help.

As the all-consuming coronavirus pandemic expands its physical, psychological and economic toll, efforts aimed at stemming the crisis are empowering the citizenry as the death toll climbs and the uncertainty grows.

Hilarie Burton at home with her sewing machine, which she is using to make protective masks.(Photo: Courtesy photo)

"We're the ant in 'The Ant and the Grasshopper' story," Burton said of herself and the northern Dutchess women with whom she launched this effort: Donna Faraldi of Red Hook; Lawrie Bird Firestone of Rhinebeck; Dr. Sharagim Kemp of Rhinebeck, who works at Northern Dutchess Hospital; Kate Kortbus of Red Hook; and Tara Shafer of Rhinebeck.

"The Ant and the Grasshopper" revolves around hard work and preparing for the future and what happens when you do neither.

Harnessing star power

Around 1.1 million follow Burton on Instagram, and she has roughly 171,300 followers on Twitter. On March 22, she posted on instagram a video of herself and her son creating protective masks out of reusable shopping bags, and challenged followers to do the same:

"What are y’all up to?" she wrote with the post. "Just sitting around? Fantastic. Got a project for you. These fabric masks can be worn over n95 hospital masks — the ones our healthcare workers are being asked to reuse. The fabric masks can be washed and sanitized. Are they ideal? Nope. Are they better than bandannas and scarves?? Yup."

She followed that up with a series of posts, sharing links and talking about local efforts. On March 25 she wrote, "Our healthcare providers need us. So I don’t wanna see any more videos about anybody being bored. We’re on a mission. Templates to make masks are all over the Internet. Pick your favorite and get to work."

An Instagram post in which Burton offered tips for sewing masks garnered nearly 40,000 likes. A post that detailed how she ran out of cotton for face masks and cut a sheet into strips for fabric was liked by nearly 32,000.

On March 30, a fan tweeted her a video showing she was watching Burton in an old episode of "One Tree Hill." Burton's reply included "wanna make some masks while you're watching?? That would be awesome."

Her advocacy has also led others to use her audience to ask for help. Residents from several states, from Massachusetts to Florida to California, have reached out about their own needs and received retweets amplifying the reach of their message.

A Twitter user with 18 followers tweeted to her on March 31 to say the Hammond Police Department in Indiana had 200 officers and each are using a single paper mask. Burton's retweet with a message of "We have some Indiana police officers in need of masks! Who can help with this one?" Received 160 likes and 42 retweets.

A tweet that same day in regard to the need at a hospital in St. Charles, Missouri asking "Do we have any mask makers nearby?!?!" received 184 likes and 16 comments. Among them were several people who said they live nearby and planned to help.

"I live in the area and know people making them. I'll talk to them!" replied Jennifer Porter, or, @jen_nay14 on Twitter.

Burton has also received her share of gratitude:

"Not all heros wear capes you and every essential workers are heros to us," tweeted @jessieputnam3, who identifies on the social media platform as an Illinois resident, a single mom and a "huge fan of walking dead and negan."

Small-town celebrities

Burton's efforts locally — she has sewn nearly 100 masks herself — are an outgrowth of the work she has done with the Families for Astor Committee, which includes hosting "Ghost Stories" fundraisers with Morgan. The couple has also gained insight into their community as business owners — as part of a group that also includes Dutchess County resident and actor Paul Rudd they own Samuel's Sweet Shop in Rhinebeck.

CLOSE

Actor Hilarie Burton reads a spooky tale at Ghost Stories, a benefit event for Astor Services for Children & Families held at Bard College.

"We are fortunate enough that we live in a small town where everybody knows everybody and so, there wasn't a lot of mythology," Burton said of assessing the impact of the pandemic on northern Dutchess. "Our information was coming from friends who work at Northern Dutchess Hospital, friends whose spouses are specialists. We're in communication. We didn't have to watch the news to know what was going on in our community."

All of this underscores how Burton and Morgan strike a delicate balance between being celebrities and simply raising a family in the Hudson Valley while engaging the local community.

"Celebrity is such a weird thing," Burton said.

CLOSE

Between Monday and Friday, Burton worked with a team of volunteers to renovate the second floor of Astor Services' main residential building in Rhinebeck, which is home to about 16 children. It's not the first project she's done with Astor, and she said she doesn't intend for it to be her last. Video by Jack Howland/Poughkeepsie Journal

Speaking of her fellow celebrities many of whom have likewise taken to social media during the pandemic, she continued, "...We all grew up in towns like this, like Rhinebeck, like all of the small towns.

"When you work in our industry, there is so much pressure to abandon that lifestyle and go to live in a city and raise your family in a city and prioritize your life around the industry and what this community has allowed us to do is shrug that off and give our kids the same upbringing we were fortunate to have."

During a telephone interview with the Journal that began at 2:30 p.m., Burton revealed her personal, as opposed to celebrity side; and she showed how one entertainment personality is a lot like many of us who have been forced to juggle schedules and adjust to working from home.

"Honey, I'm still sitting here in my pajamas and a bathrobe," she said.

Starting a movement

The coronavirus initiative operating under the Families for Astor Committee began with a series of texts between Burton, Firestone, Kortbus, Shafer, Kemp and Faraldi, who are all friends. Kortbus is the chair of the Families for Astor Committee.

According to Firestone, a board member for the Astor Services Foundation and the Northern Dutchess Hospital Foundation, who produced the Ghost Stories fundraisers, the gist of the text thread was, "How are we going to get through this?"

Burton wanted to start making masks. Firestone, who used to work on the production side of fashion photography, has a friend in Florida who is a seamstress she knows from the fashion industry. The seamstress, with a friend who is a surgeon, crafted a YouTube video on how to make masks.

Firestone shared the video with Burton, who along with Faraldi began sewing masks. Burton also shared the video with her Instagram followers, Bird said, "because that is what our dear friend Hilarie is able to do, which his amazing."

The group subsequently created a program in which roughly 40 people working at a coronavirus testing site in Kingston are being fed each day, at a daily cost of about $500. Fundraising through www.giveinkind.com, they have bought the meals from restaurants in Rhinebeck, Red Hook and Kingston, and have purchased personal protective equipment beyond the homemade masks.

"We're getting boxes on our doorstep every day," said Morrison, whose foundation's typical mission is general fundraising for the hospital, but is now focused its fundraising efforts on the coronavirus impact.

The Families for Astor group's efforts and all of the support that has been received from the community has been "overwhelming," Morrison added.

Contractors have dropped off critical N95 masks, and gloves have come from dentist offices and tattoo parlors.

"It's almost like we can't keep up with the generosity," she said. "I feel like we're just a conduit to showing the staff and hospital that are on the front lines how much everyone appreciates what they're doing and the risk they are taking every single day. You have no idea who is going to walk through the doors of the E.R., who is going coming in an ambulance."

Buy Photo

Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Hilarie Burton discuss their efforts renovating Astor Services for Children and Families in Rhinebeck in this April 11, 2017 file photo.(Photo: Ricky Flores/Poughkeepsie Journal)

Farm tales in book

Back on the 100-acre farm that Burton shares with Morgan and her children, she continues to coordinate and has been cooking up even more ways to help her neighbors as the world waits to see what the lasting impact of the pandemic will be.

And this includes the book she has coming out May 5 that will detail the couple's life in Dutchess County.

"The Rural Diaries: Love, Livestock, and Big Life Lessons Down on Mischief Farm," according to an announcement from publisher HarperOne, chronicles Burton's "inspiring story of farm life: chopping wood, making dandelion wine, building chicken coops..."

The release date remains firm but as for appearances tied to the book, Burton said, "I'm fine with kicking it out as far as we need to kick it out."

And she is using the book to drum up business for Oblong Books & Music, which operates locations in Rhinebeck and Millerton. Burton arranged with her publisher to make Oblong the exclusive source of autographed copies of "The Rural Diaries." So fans and the curious can order their copies of Burton's book through Oblong, keep their money in the Hudson Valley and receive an autographed copy.

Burton has also been thinking about the garden she typically plants each spring. This year, she said, with the anxiety generated by the coronavirus, "I should buckle down and get my seeds and get focused... I live on a farm. I've got land."

Burton is planning on expanding her growing by quadrupling what she plants, or multiplying it by 10, so she can give produce away to those who need food.

"If everyone does a little bit more, so we've got more to give, we're going to be OK," she said. "We won't be the way we were before — but we're going to be OK."

How to donate

To help the Northern Dutchess Hospital Foundation and support the coronavirus testing site in Kingston, in addition to other efforts, contact Lawrie Bird Firestone of the Families for Astor Committee at lawriebird@gmail.com or 561-346-0459.